Writing Against Genocide: Genres of Opposition in Narratives from and about Rwanda

Writing Against Genocide: Genres of Opposition in Narratives from and about Rwanda

Chapter:

(p.240)
Writing Against Genocide: Genres of Opposition in Narratives from and about Rwanda

Source:

Postcolonial Poetics

Author(s):

Zoë Norridge

Publisher:

Liverpool University Press

DOI:10.5949/UPO9781846317187.015

Over the last sixteen years, an enormous range of texts has been published in response to the genocide. Such publications focus on the sequence of events, historical context, and extracts from eye-witness accounts. This concern with the historiography of genocide is shared to a large extent by many of the more literary responses to the violence in 1994. Such responses include both personal accounts written by visiting journalists and collections of testimony. This chapter presents a reading of such texts alongside a range of memoirs authored by: survivors themselves; visitors present in Rwanda during the genocide; and visitors who travelled to Rwanda for professional reasons after the genocide. These can also be compared with novels written by Rwandans and visitors. For all these texts a sensitivity to aesthetics is a central concern, distinguishing them from other more ‘academic’ forms of writing.

Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.